One of my favorite motifs in storytelling of any kind, movies, books, TV, whatever, is the band of misfits motif where you get all these people together who are coming from different places. They theoretically should totally hate each other. And then they have to go through some kind of trial or ordeal together. And through the crucible of the pressures of that journey and quest that they go on, they are gradually changed. Each individual overcomes some of their problems and some of the differences and disputes that are just hardwired into them that they have the beefs that they have with each other, it gets resolved. And as those things get resolved, what you get on the back end of this whole adventure is not a band of misfits any longer, not a group of several individuals identified by their own marks and traits, but instead you get a fellowship, you get a band of brothers, you get a sisterhood of the traveling pants. I never saw that movie. I don't know if that actually works. You get a superhero team, you get the Guardians of the Galaxy, one of the ladies in there, like she's green, and another one's blue, and there's a raccoon, and they've got a pro wrestler, and they've got a giant tree, and yet somehow at the end of the first one, even though they know it's completely ridiculous to stand around and be like, you know, we're a family, they still do it, and it still works because this is a timeless, beautiful motif. It's a picture of what humanity is designed to be at its best, and I think it resonates with people because it's a part of the truest story ever told. And that's this one about the kingdom. Because the kingdom is all about building this new family of faith that theoretically on paper should not work, with weirdos from different parts of the world and different eras and ages and political preferences and persuasions, and yet somehow all these different Goonies from all the different corners of existence come together under the values of this upside-down kingdom of Jesus. They're changed by those values, they become agents of those values, and ultimately they're changed by the king and are unified in the king. And in doing so, Jesus creates again this new family of faith. And I know I've hit it so hard already, but I cannot stress enough how central a theme that is throughout the New Testament. If you miss that, you're not going to understand the stuff Jesus is saying moving forward. So I'm hitting it really, really hard. But the passage we're looking at today bounces us right back to it yet again. So let's talk about it yet again. Jesus is in Capernaum, he healed the leper coming off the Sermon on the Mount. Then he has the encounter with the centurion, and he heals the centurion's servant, then he goes and he heals Peter's mother-in-law, and then, well, word gets out. Like if there's a legit miracle healer going around, people are gonna come out of the woodwork and they're gonna be like, Well, yeah, I got this knee thing that's been bothering me forever, I got the gout, I got this shoulder issue. I'm gonna go find out if this is this traveling healer guy can actually do something about it. So it says in verse 16, when evening came, many who were demon-possessed were brought to him, and he drove out the spirits with a word and he healed all the sick. Now, again, this just makes perfect sense. This is gonna happen. We're gonna get into the demon possession thing in a passage that's coming up here where it seems more appropriate to tackle that difficult topic. But bottom line is Jesus has the power to heal and change lives, and people are taking him up on it. His reputation is spreading far and wide, and apparently there's just so much here that Matthew has to condense it down into a sentence because all of these anecdotes could probably be gigantic stories. So why is Matthew giving us this summary? Oh, we get an answer in verse 17. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah. He took up our infirmities and bore our diseases, which is a reference to Isaiah 53, 4. Okay, well, let's go over to Isaiah 53 and see where that fits into the larger context. Oh, that's right. Yeah, Isaiah, it breaks down into a couple of different chunks. The first like 39 chapters are really sad. Doom and judgment for Israel, several hundred years before the time of Jesus. They've been captured and taken into captivity, or they're about to be, and there's this judgment that's coming, and there's a little bit of hope in the first 39 chapters. You know, there's this line of Jesse and David is still there, but just barely. But mostly things are bad. Bad job, Israel. This is going to be rough for you. But then you get to chapter 40 and it starts to pivot. There is this language about hope that starts to sneak in. And then by the time you get to chapter 49, there's this new character introduced, this servant. And this servant of God is awesome, but he ultimately ends up getting killed, and in doing so, becomes uh the Redeemer, the one who brings about forgiveness of sins and salvation and defeats death, and he comes back to life, and in doing so, he brings life and he inaugurates this kingdom. And as you read further into Isaiah, you figure out really quickly that this kingdom is for everybody, like we've been talking about so much. It's not this homogeneous kingdom for people who are ethnically one thing or speak a certain language or from a certain part of the world. It's for all the weirdos and the goonies and the misfits from all the different corners, including the chosen people. It's for them too. Again, you go all the way back to Genesis. I know we've looked at this passage a ton, even very recently, but the call of Abram, the very place in the Bible where the whole chosen people thing starts, actually points to a new family of faith. The Lord had said to Abram, Genesis 12, 1, Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land, I'll show you. I'll make you into a great nation, and I'll bless you, I'll make your name great, and you'll be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. So again, from the very beginning of everything redemptive, the idea all along is this is for everybody. Now, we just did a scan through Matthew to look for these themes a little while ago, so I won't hit it real hard again, but then you get to Matthew, and right off the bat, there's a bunch of Gentiles there in that opening genealogy, the Magi are Gentiles, and they recognize something that the king of the Jews, Herod, should have been able to see. But not only does Herod not get it, well, maybe he does get it, and he gets it so well that he decides he wants to eliminate the threat and kill the babies and get rid of Jesus. In chapter three of Matthew, John pushes back on the Pharisees and Sadducees and is like, this isn't about your ethnicity anymore. There's a new family of faith. Big time paraphrases mine. You get into the Sermon on the Mount. There's more of the same language about how your righteousness would have to surpass that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. In other words, the systems we have are no longer the end game, but rather Jesus says he's the fulfillment, the completion of the law and the prophets. And then you get into Matthew chapter 8, where we've been hanging out, and Jesus comes off the Sermon on the Mount and he touches a leper and says, You're clean. Guess what, weirdo? You're in the new family of faith. Come on. Well, you can't do that. Well, I guess he can because he's one who has authority. And if he can tell a disease to go away and then it physically does in front of everybody's eyes, he also has enough authority to say who gets to be on the team. So this guy, you're in the fellowship. Welcome aboard. Then he goes and catches a Gentile who runs out to meet him or sends an emissary to meet him. And this guy is wrong about everything. He's wrong about his politics. He's on the wrong side of the violence. He's a Gentile, he's ethnically wrong. But he gets it, assumes the right posture before the king. And Jesus is like, guess what, weirdo? You're in the new family of faith too. I was like, What can that really be? Well, Jesus just said so. And if he has the authority to say to somebody who's not even in the same city block as him, hey, get well, and then he immediately gets well, he has the authority to say that some weirdo outsider who's of the wrong ethnicity is allowed to be in his superhero team. And then we go down to the last thing that we looked at, where Jesus goes and heals a woman. Yeah, people didn't hate women in this society, but they had a lower view than they probably should have. But guess what? Women, yep, they're on the team too. All right, lady, you're healed. She assumes the right posture before the king. And he's like, guess what, you weird marginalized person, you're a part of my team too. Welcome to the new family of faith, and she's in. So by the time we get to verse 16, where it says, This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah. He took up our infirmities and he bore our diseases. There are two themes that would have been very clear in people's minds. One, that physically Jesus is able to break the laws of time and space with the power of God to heal people in inarguable ways. Arguable now, we can debate whether this is a reliable testimony or not, but inarguable to the original audience members who saw this stuff happen and knew it couldn't be faked. What Matthew is saying is, hey, once again, just like I was kind of doing back in the first part of this document, look at how Jesus ticks all the boxes. You guys remember how the servant, the one who fixes all this stuff, is supposed to take up our infirmities and our diseases? Well, he does that. Now, if you look closely at the teachings in Isaiah, Matthew is also suggesting that he's going to take the consequences of sin and death and human failure, all the spiritual need upon himself as well. So on the one level, there is Jesus taking up the infirmities and diseases. And on the second level, all of that stuff from Isaiah is happening in the context of the idea of this kingdom and this new family of faith. It's a subtle reminder, following on the heels of these three anecdotes of outsiders gelling into a new team, a new Goonies, a new fellowship, a new family of faith, that this is the trajectory of the kingdom. It's no longer just about ethnicity, but now the person who's a member of the new family of faith is the person who does what these three people did. And that is to assume a right posture before the king, which is the starting point and the ongoing mark of the person who is in the kingdom and a follower of the king. Thank you for your patience with me as I pound this concept again and again. Just keeps coming up in every passage. It's totally on purpose. It's really important that we catch it in order for the stuff that's coming next to make sense. We're going to move on to verse 18 next time around, and Jesus talking about his homelessness and about how you probably don't get free stuff for following him. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do it again soon.